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While on-page SEO can constantly be checked on through a single tool (as it all exists within the same web page) their off-page tools are all over the place. The first thing you will want to do is look for a SEO strategy tool. Below we’ll talk about the different features that you should consider as you are shopping around.
“The first thing you'll want to look for is a SEO tool that includes a backlink checker. It should offer details on your referring domains, anchor texts, their linking authority, and more.
SEMrush, for instance, has a backlinks analytics tool that allows you to compare your website to your competitors and identifies areas of improvement.
You will also want to invest in a CRM tool that will help to track different metrics, like mentions, tags, comments, and likes. This will give you an understanding of how your off-page content is performing on social media and other websites as well.
Social Media Marketing
According to Jessica Greene of Databox, “It may be unclear if social shares have a direct impact on Google search rankings, but the indirect benefits of aligning both channels are indisputable”. As the social media industry has become more and more connected to other parts of the internet, different content pushing and linking abilities have meant that the rate at which you excel on social media will have a correlation to your ranking within Google’s SEO analysis.
One of the most important ways that social media does this for small and large companies alike, is by getting content in front of a significantly larger audience than a single website could. Greene explains, “That leads to many things that benefit SEO, including more backlinks, improved engagement signals, and more owned SERP real estate for branded queries. Additionally, understanding both SEO and social media marketing help companies perform better on both channels. Audience research on social media helps you create more targeted content. SEO research helps you understand what your social audience wants to read.
Social Media dashboards are like a looking glass, helping businesses to predict how their website content might perform based on how their social audiences have interacted with it. “Josh Brown of Helpjuice agrees that you should ‘use social interaction data obtained from your social media dashboard to improve your SEO title and meta description,’ but says you can also ‘use it to determine what topic clusters you should be building out.’
The goal of SEO isn’t to generate organic traffic; it’s to generate relevant traffic so as to increase conversions. Knowing what content users engage with allows you to do this. One of the biggest ways that companies have hurt themselves is by thinking that any outside traffic that is generated will be influential to their SEP rank, but alas this is not the reality. Google is very picky about the quality of content that it will take. They will know if you are using a wrongly-targeted influencer, simply because you’ve gone for somebody who will work with you for a few dollars and who you haven’t developed a genuine relationship with. On relevant partner sites, this will increase the amount of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT) that they view within your site.
THE RISE OF LINKING FROM INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer Marketing Hub contributor, Werner Geyser, explains,”One of the best ways to achieve EAT on your website is to collect high-quality backlinks and online mentions from key opinion leaders. Many influencers are bloggers and industry experts. Part of an influencer campaign might be to have one of your influencers feature your brand in a blog and link back to your website.” Another way that linking has become popular in the past few years is through the direct link feature, accessible on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok. Influencers have banks of links to products and services that they recommend.
“Since boosting social signals is also one of the SEO strategies that can improve your ranking, you should strive to create social media content that increases engagement through likes, comments, and shares,” says Geyser. This can certainly be achieved through content that your brand creates organically on their own profiles, however, when you compare the engagement ratio to that of an influencer partner, you find that influencer-generated content beats brand-generated content with engagement rates that are 8 times higher.
This is a big reason why brands have begun to allocate significant portions of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing. Brands can stand out in this popular marketing medium by utilizing creatively integrated campaigns or even guest posting to an influencer’s platforms. When it comes to blogging, the influencer will usually let you include a small bio about yourself, including a link back to your own site. These guest posts can have a number of flow-on benefits.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Overall, the combination of influencer marketing and social media can really help to improve your business’ SEO rankings. However, all of this will take a significant amount of time and effort to result in actual improvements in your Google search rankings.